Group of Latter Day Roleplayers

It's called Dogs in the Vineyard, and I heard it's a pretty good game (I played it once, which isn't enough to make a lasting impression). Apparently Mormons like it too.

That sounds... like more fun than is has any business being.

I expected this to be about how many Mormons one runs into these days don't really seem to be serious about their religious beliefs, but are instead just going along for the social benefits of belonging to a community that in some ways seems to work. (I.e. how many Mormons actually seem to be pretty similar to typical secularized somewhat-sensible-and-moderate Christians, despite stereotypes of them being more serious regarding their religion.)

One of the dangers of "clever" titles.

I have it on good authority that Mormons spend every waking hour role-playing real-world Mormons.

Amazingly interesting, I wish I could upvote multiple times. Instead I'm just showing it to everyone I know.

I'm going to nth everyone else saying that this deserves more exposure. It's possibly the most insightful piece of writing on the subject of group dynamics that I've read for months.

This is worth its own post.

Quite interesting.

Sounds like a job for the Historical Pre-enactment Society.

David Friedman writes about the place of children in the SCA (and how it has unfortunately changed):

I was taught to use a sewing machine by a twelve year old girl; a few years later she was the moving spirit behind a puppet theater. But that has gradually changed. More and more over the years, children who come to SCA events are expected, not to help set up the hall or cook the dinner or run the event, but to attend "children's activities."

The word you're looking for is "garb".

Of course, there are men who make and wear elaborate garb (the idea that wanting to wear fancy clothes is unmasculine is a fairly recent innovation as far as I can tell), and women who fight.

The SCA doesn't exactly have something for everybody (for example, I have a strong preference for sf fandom), but it does have something for both those who want a costume party and those who want to do carefully researched recreation of period skills.

One advantage of recreating the good parts of a past society is that there's a full human range of activities-- cooking, games, fighting, etc.

One thing the SCA does well is to have fighting awards, service awards, and arts and sciences awards. All we've got is posting to LW awards.

If that entry is correct, he may well have already written about the topic; why not ping patrissimo and ask?